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  • It’s moving fast.

  • It’s not just a ground fire.

  • It’s reaching up into the canopy here, too,

  • and just scorching everything.

  • Is this the usual amount of fire

  • that you see?

  • Are you worried about the illicit activity

  • that happens here?

  • Pará, Brazil.

  • Parts of the rainforest in this region

  • have lost so much tree cover

  • it hardly looks like the Amazon.

  • I’m on a highway called the BR-163.

  • In August, this corridor for soy and beef exports

  • lit up like an inferno.

  • Many of the fires were started on protected lands

  • on a single day, a so-called Day of Fire.

  • So, I take the highway here to a protected reserve that saw

  • major burning on that day.

  • It’s called the Jamanxim National Forest.

  • This year, the Jamanxim lost

  • over 45 square miles of tree cover.

  • That’s an area twice the size of Manhattan.

  • It’s the worst deforestation of all protected areas

  • in Brazil.

  • But many people who live here

  • see this as progress.

  • And it has a lot to do with beef.

  • Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef.

  • About half of the cattle are raised on pasture

  • that used to be rainforest.

  • And demand is growing.

  • I’m visiting an annual barbecue and auction

  • near the Jamanxim.

  • But it’s not your typical backyard get-together.

  • Some landowners and ranchers here brazenly defy

  • environmental laws.

  • Last year, a government report linked

  • this man, a union leader, to land-grabbing schemes.

  • This woman, head of a national association,

  • was fined for burning 350 acres of rainforest.

  • This man, a local mayor,

  • was caught destroying

  • over 700 acres of virgin rainforest

  • inside the Jamanxim reserve.

  • They all deny wrongdoing.

  • What producers here want

  • is to privatize the reserves, and there’s hostility here

  • towards anyone who tries to stop them.

  • The producers are petitioning

  • an important government official, Nabhan Garcia,

  • appointed by President Bolsonaro

  • to open up the Amazon for development.

  • There’s no question which side Mr. Garcia’s on.

  • He’s a rancher and farmer himself.

  • According to your own government studies,

  • many of the people in some of these protected areas

  • came in after the park was created.

  • Theyre in there illegally according

  • to your own government standards right now.

  • Part of the reason were here

  • is because of all the fires, right?

  • To be clear, deforesting land without authorization

  • is illegal in Brazil.

  • It’s seized land that's logged, burned

  • and converted, mostly for grazing.

  • Were talking millions of acres, billions of dollars

  • and a web of criminal activity.

  • But at the core of the issue is

  • what turns out to be a pretty complicated question.

  • Who does all this land belong to?

  • I catch up with Luiz Helfenstein,

  • who I’d met at the barbecue.

  • His ranch is right at the edge of the Jamanxim National Forest.

  • He considers himself

  • one of the pioneers here.

  • When you started,

  • is this the first settlement that you built?

  • Luiz came here back in the ’80s.

  • He was handed 4,000 acres of rainforest,

  • part of a government plan to develop the Amazon.

  • That’s the BR-163.

  • November 1994.

  • Then the political winds shifted and preservation

  • became the priority.

  • In 2006, the government established

  • the Jamanxim National Forest,

  • taking back most of the land

  • previously given to Luiz and other producers.

  • They felt cheated, and some have

  • responded by grabbing and burning protected land.

  • I take a ride with Agamenon da Silva Menezes.

  • Is this your car?

  • He’s the head of a union for ranchers out here.

  • Was the Day of Fire

  • an example of that disobedience?

  • But satellite data confirms

  • there was an unusual spike in the number of fires on Aug. 10.

  • Local reporters wrote about this so-called Day of Fire,

  • exposing a coordinated plan among ranchers and land-grabbers

  • to burn newly cleared forest.

  • One of those reporters, Adecio Piran,

  • soon found his face on a wanted poster.

  • Did you ever receive death threats or threats

  • to your personal safety?

  • That type of intimidation helps

  • explain how so much criminal activity can go unpunished.

  • Last year, 30 environmental activists

  • were murdered in Brazil.

  • I follow a group of firefighters with one

  • of Brazil’s environmental agencies

  • into a biological reserve.

  • The agency has been attacked by locals

  • and their authority undermined by Bolsonaro’s government.

  • None of the men will speak on the record.

  • So this is what the effort to protect the forest here

  • now looks like:

  • a handful of men carving control lines

  • and putting out brush fires with a leaf blower.

  • It takes a bird’s-eye view to capture the magnitude

  • of what theyre up against.

  • This fire is nearly four miles long.

  • According to Brazilian satellites,

  • more than a soccer field worth of rainforest

  • is cleared every minute.

  • I’m back on the road,

  • driving off federal land, when I see these two trucks.

  • They pull on to the BR-163 highway

  • with loads of fresh logs.

It’s moving fast.

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